Читать книгу Attention. Deficit. Disorder. - Brad Listi - Страница 33

The wedding went off without a hitch. A.B. and Jenny were married in a beautiful seaside ceremony at sunset. A small Mexican priest presided. A mariachi band played over the sound of crashing surf. Margaritas were served.

Two days later, I found myself alone, at the Aeropuerto José Martí in Havana, Cuba. I was relieved, having made it through customs without getting my passport stamped. A gloomy, bespectacled gentleman had handled the transaction. He was in his middle thirties, and the crown of his head was oily and bald. Just to be safe, I’d asked him politely in Spanish to refrain from stamping my passport, aware that getting one’s passport stamped was inadvisable in Cuba, where traveling was a direct violation of U.S. trade law. The man said nothing to me in response. He looked at my passport quickly and handed it back to me without a word. When I thanked him for his assistance, he yawned and buzzed me through the security door.

There were guards in green fatigues in the baggage claim area, stone-faced men wielding firearms. They were directing a spastic squad of black cocker spaniels sniffing for bombs and drugs. I’d never seen cocker spaniels doing this kind of work before.

My bag was waiting for me when I arrived at the conveyor belt. I picked it up and walked outside into a swarming horde of taxi drivers. They were all talking to me at once, trying to win my business. It was disorienting. In the end, I negotiated transport with a rail-thin, silver-haired gentleman for the flat rate of US$20. According to my guidebooks, this constituted a fairly reasonable deal.

Next thing I knew, I was sitting in the backseat of his taxi, cutting through the countryside on my way to Havana. The terrain was tropical and unfamiliar. There were tenement building carcasses, laundry hanging from their crumbling balconies. There was a stoic farmer steering a bull-pulled plow through an upturned field. There were dilapidated schools and uniformed children giggling in the littered schoolyards. There was a city bus, impossibly full, arms and faces hanging hot out of the open windows. There were three people on a motorcycle and six in a ’57 Chevy. There were weathered men smoking cigars on the sides of the road, trying to flag rides with smiles.

Nobody was wearing sunglasses.

It was illegal for me to be there.

Within minutes, we entered the city. My driver motioned to a bus station on our right and said something in Spanish that I couldn’t understand. We passed the Plaza de la Revolución. My driver told me in broken English that the large stone monument in its center stood, like the airport, in honor of José Martí. We made a left turn and wove through the neighborhoods. There were strange faces in the narrow streets. The buildings were Spanish colonial, old and falling down. Children playing stickball on the pavement. Old men smoking on the balconies above. Vintage cars rattling by. Golden era Cadillacs. Buicks and Fords. I rolled down my window and lit up a cigarette. I felt like I was in a time warp.

This was good.